Caldecott Medal Contender: There is a Tribe of Kids

by Sam Juliano

     Kirkus raved “Smith soars in this earnest, meditative work about longing, the joy of interaction, and family.”  In a similarly glowing assessment Publishers Weekly offered “Every living being, Smith implies, needs a place to belong, and children, especially need other children.”  School Library Journal gushed, urging repeated visitation: “There is much to savor and explore in this cleverly crafted picture book, and readers will glean more with each perusal.”  The unbridled fervor continued for months since the book’s early year release, and numerous respondents on Good Reads were predicting it would win the Caldecott Medal.  Alas a controversy followed the initial hoopla that centered around the use of one word in the book’s title and how it was brought to bear on the book’s art.  Though the vast majority of the book’s admirers are by and large staying the coarse, the mild dissension in some quarters has slowed down the buzz for the book, allowing some of the year’s other picture book treasures to capture the lion’s share of the talking points.  Will the real Lane Smith please stand up?  Oh yes, the book’s title and creator.  There is a Tribe of Kids is a non-stop symphony of movement, a habitat trotting exploration of a cluster of nouns and how they apply to a young boy in the Tarzan mold, dressed in  leaves (though his comfortable fitting footwear doesn’t quite conform) who travels with abandon.

There is a formidable thematic kinship with Smith’s Caldecott Honor winning Grandpa Green, a child’s eye elegiac exploration of aging and memory.  In There is a Tribe of Kids the celebrated artist applies his exotic magnifying glass on the earliest part of that journey, one rife with discovery via an awe-inspiring globe trotting journey through the natural world.  At the end it seems easy enough to conclude that if Grandpa Green is Smith’s magnum opus as I believe it is, There is a Tribe of Kids is a close runner up that was edged out at the finish line by the proverbial hair.  The first definition of the title manifests itself in a double page spread of five vignettes framed vertically and horizontally picturing the boy immersed baby goats (known as ‘kids’)  Right off the bat we know the sublime textured illustrations could not have been done without painstaking application,and the copyright page makes that clear:  “The illustrations in this book were painted in oils and sprayed with an acrylic varnish to create various mottled textures.  Also used were colored pencils, graphite, traditional and digital cut and paste.”  The end product is most assuredly like nothing we’ve seen before.  After the boy’s affectionate earthy frolic with these eventual tin can aficionados he meets a penguin which he sees at the far right of the last illustration.  Smith links the various encounters in various creative ways throughout.  Then in winter dance with the snowbird celebrated in the beloved Mr. Popper’s Penguins, under the Smithian banner There was a Colony of Penguins the boy has plenty of love to share before falling through the ice to behold a canvas seemingly right out of a Jacques Demy musical, what with its deeply layered kaleidoscopic invention.  Smith finds a fabulous word to describe this aquatic rendezvous:  There was a smack of jellyfish, and their wondrous creatures, looking life multi colored open umbrellas swim across in the blackish deep sea.

From there our intrepid young hero finds himself on the back of a whale; Smith calls the subsequent convention as a pod, and the green, turquoise and purple appear to have a pictorial kinship.  But an unwelcome reality sets in when the boy is whisked off the whales’ back by a raven in a flock.  The author assesses this hijacking in markedly critical terms:  There was an Unkindness of Ravens.  But unlike the Wicked Witch of the West’s flying monkeys the who held the boy was undermined by the leafy apparel, and the boy was dropped, ultimately landing on a tower of rocks.  We get a wide canvas look at this jungle Stonehenge, but our ceaseless marauder falls off the top of one pile and lands in a Pile of rubble, where he comes upon a Growth of Plants, which leads him to a Parade of Elephants in a spectacular spread that evokes Sendak.

In quick staccato strokes Smith documents the boy cavorting with a Troop of Monkeys, a Crash of Rhinos and a Band of Gorillas before he is persuaded to use one half of the coconut shell he doubled as a musical instrument in the gorilla parade as a fill for a turtle hump that he uses to fit in with a line of turtles.  But after he falls asleep on the path There was a Turn of Turtles, he is lost and travels through rain to nestle under an apple tree.  They a caterpillar shows up on his knee, and Smith’s next series of vignettes are among the most brilliant in the book – the boy apes the intricate changes of the caterpillar until he turns into a cocoon and finally becomes a butterfly (There was a Flight of Butterflies) in a sequence that we also saw this year in the extraordinary Du Iz Tak? by Carson Ellis.  But a butterfly tapestry is always a showstopper for obvious reasons, and Smith’s rendition is up there with the best of them.  Then the boys connects with the insects and the sky above in another series of sublime, dazzling, and ingratiating vignettes:  There was a Sprinkle of Lightning bugs/ There was a Family of Stars.  The water is next:  There was an Ocean of Blue which provides for another Hall of Fame picture book tapestry.

This leads to the exhilarating conclusion.  First up, There was a Bed of Clams where this tireless traveler finally konks out in the open mollusk.  There was a Night of Dreams.  The boy spots a colored trail There was a Trail of Shells which lead shim back to A Tribe of Kids, in a canvas of inordinate pictorial riches and endless enchantment.  The kids -referred to as a tribe, which passes the dictionary scrutiny ( A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea), but considering that there was some degree of backlash because of the possible implications connected to the anarchic behavior of this boy in some of the earlier vignettes but it is abundantly clear the mood in the final two magisterial canvases is one of playfulness, joy, and affectionate emulation.  Though I respect everyone’s opinion on the book I found  There is a Tribe of Kids  a celebration of life, a call for integration and a respect for diversity.  Spectacularly beautiful, the book exudes a noble reverence for the sanctity of life.  Caldecott committee scrutiny is strongly urged.

Note:  This is the fifty-seventh entry in the ongoing 2016 Caldecott Medal Contender series.  The series does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running.  In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration.  It is anticipated the series will include in the neighborhood of around 50 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender.  Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end.  The awards will be announced on January 23rd, hence the reviews will continue till two from the days before that date.

Lane Smith